Still
by IcyTanya
Summary: Beginnings are such delicate times and Echizen is growing up.


Tezuka epitomized the wise old owl, 'the more he saw the less he spoke/ the less he spoke the more he heard'

Slight AU (it is fanfiction)

Standard disclaimer applies. Yaoi warning.

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Tezuka epitomized the wise old owl, 'the more he saw the less he spoke/ the less he spoke the more he heard'. He noticed everything and used it when necessary; he cared about his teammates so he never let them forget their ultimate goal- the gold medal of the Nationals, but he also delicately reminded them from time to time, that there was something beyond that ultimate goal. He was a fair man, he never asked them to do anything he would not have been willing to do himself so people listened; in the search of higher things, the mundane things such as sleep and academics should not be forgotten. A perfect leader of men. Napoleon might have been jealous.

Nevertheless, he had a good sense of irony, and underneath that quiet manner lurked a spark of humor sharpened by constant contact with both Fuji and Inui, so he reminded himself that he was not God and as he made his own mistakes- he let his friends make theirs. He was a fixed, immovable object that everyone relied on.

Ryoma too had sharp eyes, trained practically since birth. He saw everything but he noticed very little, he didn't care to notice. He could not see the forest for the trees and his trees had round yellow inedible fruit with white stripes. His focus on the trees was admirable, a single-minded intensity that burned with all the warmth that youth, talent and arrogance could give. And beyond these immediate opponents (whom he barely even noticed, whom he played because he must) lay shadowy figures and he measured himself by these figures. It wasn't that he used unstoppable force, more that he _was _an unstoppable force.

This was just how they were.

Tezuka

---noticed everything

He never noticed the way Ryoma's eyes followed him everywhere, on or off the tennis courts. Sometime during the beginning of the year, he had started doing his homework with Tezuka in the school library. The first time he came and slid neatly into the seat across him, Tezuka had raised an eyebrow.

"It's too noisy at home," Ryoma explained, frowning petulantly

Tezuka had nodded, had thought of telling him that he shouldn't be sitting with Tezuka, it wouldn't be looked on kindly especially now that he was captain again. Thought of telling him that his serve had improved again, telling him that he had ink streaks on his cheek, that he had been ridiculously proud when Ryoma had won the U.S. Open and come back to Seigaku instead of going on to build his career. He settled for saying, "If you have trouble, I can help," a complete waste of words and uncharacteristic of him but it was worth it to see Ryoma smiling shyly and nodding.

After they finished, it was only good manners to walk him home, it was close to his own anyway.

In retrospect, he should have expected to have been asked to play a game with him, but it wouldn't have changed anything- he would have said yes anyway. He always did, but he hadn't caught on to that.

Tezuka…

----had a sense of irony

The time Echizen had gotten hurt playing Fudomine's Shinji, the time he insisted he had slipped and fallen when Akutsu Jin had come to Seigaku, the time he had come to practice when ill and collapsed. Even now, Tezuka had nightmares about them, about his heart beating as if he had run a race, no a _marathon. _The feeling that he shouldn't have allowed it, any of it, to happen. He forgot that he had promised himself not to interfere in his teammates' lives. He forgot that he would have done nearly the same thing as Echizen in those situations; he forgot that he couldn't have known that any of it would happen.

He would have avoided talking to Echizen, sitting in the library with him when the nightmares started again, midway through the year but then Echizen would sit with someone else, possibly that brown-haired girl from his own year. It made him uneasy, in a way he hadn't felt before. It wasn't the uneasy when Eiji was planning something or the uneasy when Fuji began to talk about Mizuki. It wasn't even the "Look out! Inui Juice!" sort of uneasy, this was different, a bitter taste at the back of his throat, faint but persistent.

If he had ever imagined what jealousy felt like, this would have been it.

So he pushed all of it systematically (careful even in this) to the back of his head so he wouldn't have to deal with it, and that was where he pushed the sense of fatality that came and the thought that he should talk to someone about it, he should but he couldn't. Even though he knew Echizen was 15 years old, and hardly the innocent kid he had known before who only thought of tennis. _This _still felt wrong, whatever it was, _whoever_ it was- because it felt like a person, something live and breathing and whispering poison, that Tezuka couldn't hear yet but knew he'd be able to if he listened, if he didn't keep that box of things related to Echizen (he never stole hamburgers, though he stole sushi from everyone's plate; he teased Momoshiro and Eiji, even Inui but not Kaidoh; his eyes were sunrays trapped in a house of mirrors) safely locked away and unexplored. Fuji would tell him it was unhealthy if he knew (did he know? What did he know? What was there to know?) but he would understand, he had made enough unhealthy decisions himself. Perhaps he would even know how to handle this person. This horrible, cackling witch who kept on saying things Tezuka didn't want to hear.

Sometimes he felt, in his definite, calculated manner, that he was going mad.

Ryoma didn't know what it was. He wasn't even sure whether Tezuka-buchou knew what it was but whatever it was, was disrupting them. Buchou still walked him home on Tuesdays and Fridays when they did their homework together, but he wouldn't play games with him anymore. In the privacy of his own room, Ryoma gazed down thoughtfully at his maths homework, and imagined throttling buchou like he wanted to. He had been annoyed since the beginning of the year. Something had changed, all the girls giggled stupidly wherever he went, even more than before. Momoshiro-chan tried to give him advice on how to get dates with them, "Che, what would you know about it? You're trying to get a date with Kaidoh-senpai" he had said smugly

"What?" he spluttered, "I would never go on a date with Mamushi,"

"What are you talking about, you moron?" Kaidoh-senpai had hissed from where he was standing behind him, he had been blushing, while they figured it out, Echizen made good his escape.

Fuji had been giving him mysterious and _silent_ looks, that wasn't right, Fuji-senpai never said nothing, any remark that caused more confusion was fine with him. Even weirder was his father acting the same way, not trying to push porn on him or taunt him about his height. Buchou had been the same though, he had been afraid- when he was away for almost a year that he had built up a dream-figure in his mind, that the Tezuka-buchou he remembered had never existed. He was secretly glad that he hadn't been around when Momoshiro-chan and Kaidoh-senpai had been vice-captain and captain; he didn't think he could call anyone except Tezuka-buchou buchou. It wouldn't fit right.

Only, now even Tezuka-buchou was acting strange. Not so that anyone else would notice but he knew, the few times he had agreed to a match with him, that he was holding some part of himself back. It was _annoying_, and Echizen was pretty sure it wasn't about tennis, and he didn't understand how something could be Not-About-Tennis so he couldn't help. He had been pushing things with buchou because when he returned, he found himself wanting to be around him, more than just playing tennis, though tennis was involved in there somewhere. He hadn't fought it, because it was…nice, being around someone who didn't talk all the time, didn't enjoy being cryptic, and didn't have weird or/and mentally damaging hobbies.

If only Tezuka-buchou hadn't been such an idiot and changed and started to push him away. Well, he'd just have to push again harder, was all. He abandoned his barely touched notebook, and went downstairs, "'kaa-san, can I have a friend over for dinner tomorrow?" he asked taking the heavy cans she was holding and politely carrying them in to the kitchen. He was always polite to his kind, caring mother.

She looked pleasantly surprised, "Of course, who is it?"

"Buchou," Ryoma shrugged uncomfortably under her suddenly penetrating stare but after a moment, she just dimpled and turned away. "I'll make sure dinner is ready by seven, that OK?"

"Usu," he replied, a short while later he had dismissed the smile as 'kaa-san being 'kaa-san.

Buchou would be too polite too refuse without a decent excuse, Ryoma knew, and tomorrow was Saturday so they didn't have school to worry about though they did have practice.

After practice (which was extra-long for some reason) he usually asked Buchou to play a match with him, this time he asked him over for dinner. He looked faintly surprised and even more faintly worried but he nodded affirmation, "I'll have to tell my parents."

He had and then they had walked quietly to Ryoma's home. Tezuka looked straight ahead and Ryoma, under his cap, had his eyes set firmly on the ground.

Tezuka firmly blanked his mind of all that he wanted to say, it felt more and more like babbling the more he went through the words. Or maybe that was the cackler in his mind speaking- it was hard to tell the difference anymore.

He bowed politely to Echizen's mother, who smiled and welcomed him and his father, who merely glanced up- once at the sports bag slung over his shoulder, and once at Echizen.

Echizen Rinko smiled to herself, rather wistfully, her son had grown up. She checked the food that was cooking and came out to tell the two boys that since they were early they would have to wait. She held back a laugh at the way they were still standing, Echizen with Karupin in his arms and his friend, Tezuka-kun, looking away politely. As if Echizen stroking his cat was something very private.

She would be lying if she said this was what she had wanted for her son, but… she had lost all expectations of him being normal, the first time she had held him in his arms and he had looked straight at her through one hazel eye, the other one firmly closed.

Her husband seemed less accepting, she was almost sure he knew as little as she did but it was, she supposed, enough. As she saw the two of them climb up the stairs slowly, negotiating awkwardly with each other's bag, she wondered whether there _was_ anything more to know.

Echizen had cleaned up all the things in his room that usually found themselves on the floor, or his bed, or on one singularly strange occasion on the curtain rod. Now he wished he hadn't, moving the stuff 'round would at least have been less awkward than buchou looking at him. Or, rather- not looking at him. He didn't have anything on his face, he had stolen a look in his mother's favorite glass vase (which meant it was always shiny) and he had looked alright, so now he was thinking of what to do to make buchou look at him, only that made him sound like a bratty little kid and he had the idea that that would not help.

He shifted on the bed and faced Buchou who was sitting stiffly on the chair at his desk.

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I like this story, it'll probably have about two more chapters...


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